I am grateful for hope, despite the fact that it has betrayed me over and over. I’ve tried to extinguish it to make things easier for myself, but it always lives in my heart.

I wrote this to Margo of the Three Weeks newsletter, who asked that her readers tell her something they’re grateful for. In return, she sent me a book of Stefan Zweig stories, a postcard, and some candy. It was a worthwhile reward.

Cristiano Ronaldo kicked the soccer ball, but he may as well have kicked me in the stomach. The only thing about which I am fiercely and unrepentantly patriotic is also the only thing at which American exceptionalism has never allowed this nation to unconditionally succeed.

I am worried about the state of my creativity. I am very good at starting things, but not so good at finishing them. I take it, from something that has recently come to my attention, that I am not alone in this phenomenon, but I don’t like it.

Picture the scene: it’s mid-November, the middle of a gorgeous fall in New York City. (You know, except for that whole devastating storm thing that happened a couple of weeks earlier.) It was not yet cold and wintry enough for me to talk myself out of riding my bike to work, so I hadn’t. It was midafternoon and I was on my way home, walking my bike across the street onto the bridge.

Sometimes, many people don’t know how to drive in NYC. Annoyingly, one of the things that these people like to do is stop in the middle of a crosswalk. This is maddening in any situation, but it is especially galling when that crosswalk leads onto the Brooklyn Bridge. I assume that this guy had never heard of it before, because that’s the only reason I can imagine for his failure to stop at the proper place.

I had to cross the street in front of him, in a space that was narrowly large enough for my to fit through with my bike. Sadly, I miscalculated, and accidentally nicked his bumper with my pedal.

My personal philosophy has long been to not regret. My basis for this is fairly simple: given the assumption that the total outcome of your life’s decisions has led you to where you are, if you are happy, then you have nothing to regret. After all, even the bad or “wrong” decisions you made were part of what got you to a happy place, so there is no reason to regret them even if you recognize that they were incorrect.

I certainly don’t mean for this to be the sort of thing that everyone takes to heart; there are dozens of reasons for any given person to disagree with me, even if they are by my standard perfectly happy. However, for me, it has worked. I have made plenty of incorrect decisions in my life, but the place where I resided was, after a fair number of bumpy spots, generally happy.